Two Poles

WHO the exercise is for:

Anyone and Everyone. This is a very basic exercise.

HOW to set it up:

Put 2 poles on the ground about 20m apart (this is about 6 canter strides for the average horse, but it doesn’t matter if your horse has a smaller or larger natural stride). If you don’t have poles you can use anything! I have done this exercise using 2 thistles as my markers, all you really need is 2 fixed points in a straight line.

WHAT to do:

This is a canter exercise. Canter at your regular working pace over the poles, or past your markers, counting how many strides your horse does. You may want to canter through a few times to ensure you’ve got a nice steady rhythm. On your next approach collect your horse up more and try to add one more stride in between the poles. After you get that try to ride more forward and do it in less strides. Try to keep the same level of impulsion all of the time (don’t slow down too much for your collected approach, or gallop through your lengthened approach).

WHY we do it:

To get our horses listening to what we want, to learn how to collect/extend our horses. We want to be able to ask our horses to come back (or go forward) over jumps and it’s important that we keep our impulsion or there is a danger that our horse will refuse (too slow/over-collected) or smack the entire jump down (too fast and flat). It’s also handy to be able to adjust strides like this when you are faced with a combination that is a long 1 or a short 2 strides, you can make your decision and ride into it accordingly.

MORE tips:

More advanced horses can try to add or remove 2 strides, or do this same exercise over 2 small jumps.